Experiencing God's Presence

I am grateful for my cell group seniors for inviting me over to G12's Ignite. For all the information of everyone, I was experiencing depression, hatred, anger and spiritual dryness over these past months and I was seeking to reconnect with God again. I believed God sent my cell group leaders to help me lead me back to him.

From my personal point of view, Ignite is G12's form of retreat. G12 is a Christian Community open for all people from different walks of life and from different religions. This community help you build a personal relationship with God.

Ignite was a one day event with a series of lecture. It was kinda boring listening all day and sitting in your chair. But I was trying to fight back that boredom by eating chips to divert my boredom. In fairness to the community, I learned a lot from that lectures.

The highlight of this event is the part where you get to experience God's presence through the Holy Spirit. We were all asked to stand in front, close our eyes and raise our hands. I prayed and asked God to accept me. I was there because I wanted to feel His presence and so I was seeking and asking Him to receive my desires. True enough, while praying and focusing on my desires and just surrendering myself to Him...I burst into tears, weeping aloud and felt my hands got warm and there was a tingling sensation. Then I felt a heavy feeling coming from my fingertips down to my arms. It was so heavy that I needed to shake my arms and even my legs. I felt my body shaking while picturing out a white dove flapping it's wings. I was following what the dove was doing. My hands felt like the dove's wings flapping. Fear of the heavy feeling I felt was my initial reaction, but the prayers of our guides really did guide me to receive God's presence. My friend beside me started to utter words, "Come into me! Come into me!". The voice was firm and getting louder. It seemed like her voice was glowing as I describe it and I felt God's presence in her as well. It felt like God was speaking that words. It was an amazing experience! I felt inner peace after that. The peace that I was longing for.

*Photo credited to Johnharper of Deviantart.

Blessing of the Fire

It's Black Saturday. And one of the events that I most awaited this time is the Blessing of the Fire. I first witnessed it when I was younger. We attended this kind of mass at Redemptorist Church and we were bringing candles with us. Inside the church, the first part of the mass, everything is dark. Lights inside the church is switched off and a fire dance presentation was performed by the church's dance group. A big candle was placed in the altar and it was being lit. When lit, the priests lights his candles and pass the light on to the people inside the church lighting their candles then the priests roams around blessing the lit candles. It is a very spiritual experience.

*Photo credit to Six Degrees of Inspiration

Feast of Divine Mercy

It was a bit late when I woke up this morning, around 9:30 am. Surprisingly, our house was quiet, not the usual mornings that we have wherein I hear my father watch TV in loud volumes or turn on our videoke to listen to some songs and sing with the tune of it, or better yet hear my parents argue over something. But this time, it was all quiet.

After doing some crunches, I headed to the living room and turned on the monitor of my desktop and started to blog hop again until I saw my mom, lighting this modified candle of ours and placed in our altar. I then asked her the purpose of it, and she told me it was the Feast of the Divine Mercy.

Yikes! Didn't even know about that, shame on me! FYI, my family's a devotee of the Divine Mercy and as a devotee I would like to greet everyone Happy Divine Mercy! c",)

On the other hand, watched the news last night and I'd like to congratulate the passers of the Philippine Bar Exam. Out of 5,626, only 1,289 successful takers made it! Kudos to all of you! Congratulations also to the Ateneo de Davao University passers!

My Answered Prayers...

Last February 26, if you have read it here from my blog, I was blogging about Praying, right? Did you remember? Haha.

Anyways, I just like to tell you guys that my prayer was already answered. That time I asked for signs, but unfortunately the signs shown were not those that I wanted to be. In any case, I then realized now, that it was never really meant for me and I heartily accept the fact.

I am not going to go into details about this, but I'm just sharing with you guys about it. Hehe.

For now, I'm happy that I followed my instincts and I now know that the decision I chose was indeed God's will. Truly if you have faith in your prayers, God would really answer it, it might take long, but the long wait will always be worthwhile.

Furthermore, another prayer of mine was granted, I got a text message from the hospital I applied for 5 months ago (what a long wait!) and I am being scheduled for a work interview tomorrow.

Patience is indeed a virtue. All big thanks to Him!

Wish me luck!

Why Pray?

"Jesus prayed and He told us to pray. We can be sure that the answer will come, and it will be good. If it is not exactly what we expected, chances are we were not asking for quite the right thing. Our heavenly Father hears the prayer, but wants to give us bread rather than stone."

- Elisabeth Elliot

I pray not only because there are things that I ask of Him. I pray because I thank Him for all the blessings that He bestows on me. But there are times, I often wonder whether or not God does hear my prayers. Some of my prayers were answered the way I wanted it to be, though some were not. It does made me upset. But I try to think that perhaps this isn't the right time to receive an answer from Him, or possibly it wasn't meant for me.

Last night, I prayed something from Him and asked for signs, apparently He gave me the answer that I didn't expect. It causes confusion in my part if that was really it. But I guess it might be it and have to accept it. I may be disappointed, but I think it's for the better. I'm sad. Was it really the answer?

Huhu...my back really hurts! *Sob